Thursday, September 27, 2012

Horrorthon Countdown Challenge Day 4! Stuff You Hate

Holy crap we got through Hump Day and now it's the easy days and then the weekend and that's IT. EEEE!

Big Octopunk thanks for the best-attended HHD contest in a long while, and shout out to lovable lurkers HandsomeStan, Mr. AC and my lovely wife for sounding off! (Yes I know instead of lurking they could be just ignoring us, but I can pretend.) I have a current favorite haiku, but since the entries just keep piling up I'll keep the contest rolling until Sunday, aka Horrorthon Eve.

For today's project I want us to compose some big, sloppy lists. We talk about making category-based lists of movies we've reviewed, and I have faith that someday Johnny Sweatpants will do exactly that (we're all thinking that, right?). But for today, I'm going to call out my three least-favorite genres of horror movie and then I'm going to spit out the movies that fit those categories as I think of them. What I want from you guys is to shout out movies that I haven't thought of, AND, more importantly, lay down the genre of horror that YOU like least, so we can start helping you out the same way.

What I hope for the end result, besides fun, is a potential resource for someone (maybe even someone who isn't Johnny) to actually start lists of these various genres. I'm going with genres that we dislike to narrow the field a little, because a free-for-all barrage of you crazy people yelling out all the horror movies you like just isn't something the internet can take.

I'm considering this a pretty loosey-goosey affair. Feel free to jump on anyone else's bandwagon, mention movies you have or haven't seen, or point out movies that overlap the categories we've already chimed in on. The only guideline is to be clear which category a movie belongs to when you bring it up. And so here we go.

I'm with you AC! As a self-proclaimed biddy, even though I'm slightly curious about those movies, I just can't convince myself to watch them. Which is one of the reasons I loved it when Octo did the recap of all the Saw deaths. I want to know about the movie - but I don't want to watch it!

All the ones AC listed as well as those Human Centipede movies. *shudder!*

I worry that the creativity of Horrorthoners in naming sub-genres will act as a barrier to JSP ever actually organizing the monster list into categories. Maybe we'll have to take this brainstormed thread of subgeneres and do some conflating to come up ultimately with a list of say, 12 main horror categories.

I think the depraved/torture porn one is the only one I really have no interest in.

Though the silly ScFy made-for-tv flicks are pretty universally lame. I reviewed one about a whooly mammoth a few years ago, and since then, I've surfed past similar nonesense a few times.

i dunno -- i'm sort of case-by-case. i tend to reject things just because they suck of their own merits. for instance, i frigging hated Memorial Day, not because it was a slasher, but just because the acting was irredeemably bad. i hated blair witch 2 because i found the characters annoying. i don't dislike found footage movies on spec.

it was really DOTD 2004 that made me settle into this point of view. that was the last time i went into a movie prepared to hate on it because of the category (in that case, remake). it blew my freaking mind, so i stopped generalizing.

I love it! "Shit-Pop" is the perfect name for Final Destination and the like - films that have a decent budget but any potential edges are dulled by "Hollywood bullshit". An endless assembly line of "safe" feces.

You do point out a genre that needs to be defined, which is recent mainstream stuff (regardless of quality). All the movies you mention are 2000 or after, and I'm sure at least some of the 90's should be in that category, too (Idle Hands from 1999 comes to mind).

As subcategory would be movies in which "legit" actors go slumming in horror. These are usually below par (Gothika, Hide and Seek).

Final Destination has some game. The other two you mention do indeed suck.